Teddy bear donated to Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia.
If, in a particularly dull small talk conversation, I was asked what my favourite museum is, I would struggle. Instinct tells me to go for a safe option – the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC and the British Museum in London are both wonderful, and endearingly safe bets. But neither set me thinking or played with my emotions as much as the Museum of Broken Relationshipsin Zagreb.
It’s an odd concept for a museum, and the items in it aren’t particularly exciting. But the stories behind them are what count. And collecting stories loosely around a theme is something that not enough museums attempt.
Similarly, if you were to ask me which museum around the world I’d like to go to most that I haven’t already been to, it wouldn’t be the Hermitage in St Petersburg or the Louvre in Paris. It would be the Museum of Bad Art in Boston.
This is probably the point where I should say that any travel editor reading this who wants to commission me to go to Boston and write about anything at all is welcome to get in touch. Your task will be a blatant excuse for me to go and visit the Museum of Bad Art, but that’s OK, we all win in the end.
It may be appallingly executed for all I know, but I’m just enchanted by the concept. Having the balls to attempt something so unusual, yet full of rich possibility, makes me love it already.
It has also set of a train of thought in motion. If I could magic up a museum from scratch, what would it be about? With no further comment – the wonders of what’s inside are far more potent in your mind than in any prescriptive description I can offer – I present 25 ideas…
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- The Museum of Inaccurate Maps
- The National Library of Terrible Interviews
- The Museum of Erroneous Predictions
- The Museum of Bad Ideas
- The Museum of Inventive Murders
- The Museum of Fictional Creatures
- The Museum of Religious Cults
- The Museum of Rubbish Birthday Presents
- The Museum of Absurd Wars
- The Museum of Natural Disasters
- The Museum of Advertising Backfires
- The Mid-Life Crisis Museum
- The Museum of Unpopular Movies
- The Museum of Foolish Tattoos
- The Museum of Chutzpah
- The Museum of Unexpected Etymology
- The Museum of Unlikely Sexual Encounters
- The Library of Ultra-Niche Wikipedia Entries
- The Museum of Crap Inventions
- The Museum of Mutiny
- The Museum of Murphy’s Law
- The Museum of Pyrrhic Victories
- The Museum of Poorly Thought-Out Architecture
- The Museum of Mundane Photography
- The Museum of Unintended Consequence
Any more to add? Suggest some by leaving a comment below
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Oh my god, these are all amazing! Please magic them up for me!
Somewhere down the line there needs to be The Museum of Bizarre Museums…
These are all so much more worth the effort of setting up than the World’s Largest Collection of Dog Collars at Leeds Castle in Kent.
Great idea!
I would like to visit “The Museum of Good Ideas”
Which includes this post
Hiliarious and uncanny that I was thinking of quite the same thing this week. Well done on your list. I’d like to nominate The Museum of Over-Confidence (which could perhaps sometimes collaborate with your Museum of Chutzpah). Also on my mind is the Museum of Rats, and a museum simply called Water, including an interactive exhibit that serves you a glass of cold, fresh water.
And don’t forget the Museum of Regrettable Misspellings.